


this room (and us in it)

by fiddleogold_againstyoursoul



Series: the universe in which i love you [2]
Category: Prey (Video Game 2017)
Genre: Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Poetry, a lot of literature, more poetry reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-01 12:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15773913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiddleogold_againstyoursoul/pseuds/fiddleogold_againstyoursoul
Summary: If memory is what makes a man, the monster Morgan created wants to be more than that.





	this room (and us in it)

**Author's Note:**

> it makes more sense contextually to read "this hour (and what lives)" first if you haven't already but hey, whatever floats your goat, chap(acabra)s

For the longest time it has been trapped inside a mind, inside a memory, in a chair, and now it is trapped inside a room. No longer the containment chamber: Morgan saw to that. It has a room, close to Morgan's -- it thinks, wishes, knowing fully well it was created not for thinking or wishing like this. It has a bed, though it does not often sleep in it. It does not often sleep at all. It has a bookcase, which Morgan fills with books: diplomacy, and classics, and languages, and scientific journals. Almanacs. Atlases. It has what Morgan calls a TV, a flat screen projecting moving images not unlike security feed, which it's seen before. But these images tell a story, like the books Morgan loves. It does not much like the TV or the stories it tells. Words, somehow, convey more.

Morgan says it's silly for this, that these images are produced according to words anyways. They spend a day going over the semantics of script and production, and it walks away more knowledgeable, but no more in love with the people and places, the sets on the screen. They are pretending. Sometimes their pretence is believable, or at least beautiful enough to make it _wish_ it were real, but it cannot shake the knowledge that the images, words, faces, they are all pretending to be something they're not. Strikes a little too close to home there. Whatever  _home_ even means, excepting regular context.

It likes the books infinitely more: at least the lying words are flat, and they don't pretend to be something else. Or maybe it likes the books better for a different, less rational reason. Through its existing eyes -- Typhon eyes, though it's no longer Typhon in its head -- the words are difficult. Different. It can read them, can understand them, but it's different. Different from how Morgan reads them. And it doesn't want to shift into Morgan, when the man's still here, so it lets him read to it. His voice, the intonations and inflections, how it rises and falls. How every word falls off his lips different, even the same words over and over. Sometimes Morgan looks up halfway through a book, smiles a crooked smile, and croaks: "Let's take a break." And they watch some TV, while Morgan recovers his voice and drinks water. Water. It's been offered some, but it doesn't need it. Not like Morgan, who is human and has things like needs and wants. It isn't supposed to need and want.

It does.

There are tomes on diplomacy, which Morgan isn't exactly subtle about. This is the training Alex spoke of. Little though human thoughts on communication matter to the Typhon. When it expresses this, Morgan laughs and shakes his head, and some of his greying hair falls into his eyes. He needs a trim. It does not express this. It likes him the way he is now: real. Mask if not fully undone, at least unclasped. Honest.

There is no reason to lie, here.

"The Art of Diplomacy," Morgan reads. It studies his face. "This one -- I remember it. Francois de Callieres. He represented Louis XVI."

_Do the numbers behind his name mean anything?_

It knows the answer. It's making conversation, trying to hear Morgan's voice slip from the composed rises and falls of an avid reader and speaker.

"There have been a lot of Louises." Morgan smiles. "It's just to help keep track."

_So names are nothing more than identifiers._

"Yes." He hesitates. "Names can mean a lot to some people."

It considers this.

_Do they to you?_

"Yes, and no." He settles the heavy book on his lap. "Morgan Yu. That's just -- that's what people call me. That's how they remember me. So naturally, the association of a person with their name, that's important. And there's the kind of people whose names mean something...to their parents, to themselves. For me, personally, Morgan doesn't mean anything. It has a meaning, probably -- I didn't look it up. Some people do. Some people care about things like that. I'd say it's similar to zodiac signs, horoscopes, Myers-Briggs types...sorry, I'm going off on a tangent. Anyway, the meaning of Morgan, this word? It doesn't mean anything. Tons of people are named Morgan. It means something to me, specifically, that I'm Morgan, because that's how I know myself. That's how you were taught to know yourself, in the sim." He pauses here. "Tell me I'm making sense."

_You are._

"Good." He smiles. "So words, words themselves don't have meanings divorced from what we attach to them. That's the significance of a name, which is just words."

It is quiet for a while. It is thinking about what it means not to have a name.

Morgan touches it. Nudges it, puts a hand on its...well, what would be a thigh, anyways. "Hey," he says, looking straight at it. "Okay. You don't need a name to be a memory. It's just kind of a tag. Like the tags on data. Helps to remember. And you, you'd be pretty damn difficult to forget."

 _Read the book,_ it thinks. He nods. He's still looking at it, out of the corner of his eye, but he reads. They get through two chapters. It could still go on, theoretically -- no need for retention time in this body, after all -- but it wants to let Morgan rest. What a stupid sentiment. What a strange word, stupid. And even strange should be beyond its vocabulary, which is assimilating to Morgan's, accumulating words and terms from all the memories it can still hold onto.

"You should think out loud," Morgan says, putting a hand on its almost-thigh again. It doesn't resent the touch. It resents much, still; it cannot shake that part. But then it is human to hate as much as it is Typhon. That universal tendency to box things into tolerable or not. Morgan, though, Morgan it cannot resent. Morgan the idea, it can. Morgan the scientist, tricking it and putting his mind inside it to a degree that cannot be undone, cannot be ignored, cannot be overcome. Morgan himself, this small, angry, tired man, is much more than a word. And it does not resent him, though it should. Could. Should, could, both also just words.

So it understands after all.

"Did you hear me?" His voice is laughing. They are becoming more daring with each other. In touch, in tone. Alex knows, but says nothing. The Operators, who have names and memory, Igwe, Sho, Salazar, Mikhaila, they know. They might have said something; it knows by the hardened look in Morgan's eyes sometimes when they lie side by side and breathe in sync. "Look at me." It does. His face softens. "You're beautiful."

Beautiful. No. Beautiful it is not.

 _Don't try to trick yourself,_ it thinks. _I disappear with your memories. I am of your memories. I am of the darkness in your dreams._

"Your voice. That's not darkness."

You are a blind man trying to see light in the mirror.

"You said it yourself. You are not me."

 _I do not exist outside of you,_ it thinks, and the bitterness must seep through their connection, because he flinches. It shifts, skin turning soft and sensitive, nerves reworking. Morgan stares at this reflection. He does not move, not his mouth, not his eyes even to blink.

"This is not what is beautiful," he says.

_Though you do not deny it is._

"You were the one who called me vain." He smiles. He touches its face, and it feels the skin melt away. He does not remove his fingers. "You're angry at me," he says. "What's wrong?"

Nothing. That is the answer of a child. A youth. It is neither. It has existed for as long as it remembers, as fully grown and autonomous. Or at least autonomous to a degree. Autonomy is difficult to assume when it is shaped by someone else's.

 _You,_ it thinks, instead. Morgan stares.

It wants to hurt him, it thinks, though not out loud. This too is childish. The Typhon do not act on resentment. They devour.

It could devour Morgan, if it wished.

"I am wrong," he echoes, moments delayed. "Correct me."

_I am your correction._

"That you are. But you're more than that."

_What more?_

His face is distant. He looks like he wants to say something that will ruin him. But then they both hear the heavy footsteps down the hall, and Morgan straightens, all that softness disappearing from his face. Alex knocks. It's ceremonial. There is no pretence of privacy on this ship, where the security cameras in their rooms are glaring in the open. "Come in," Morgan says. "We're just about finished."

"Morgan." Alex pushes open the door. "Apologies. I'll have to cut this session short: there's a call for you."

"A call," Morgan repeats. Flat. Not laughing.

"Mother."

His face changes, but only momentarily. It watches. It looks to Alex, who is watching, too, but through dull eyes. You'd think growing up alongside someone would make them easier to read. Or maybe Alex doesn't want to read. Reading requires stillness, after all, and Alex is anything but still. Everyone on this ship is moving somewhere, always, magnitude with a direction. It doesn't know if it has a direction. Other than what is mapped out for it ahead, or course. Other than this.

"I'll be back," Morgan says. "Don't wait up."

Don't count on it.

 

* * *

 

They are not intimate in the ways Morgan must know intimacy. It can access those memories if it wants: men and women, their soft skin and warm bodies, the sheets, the teeth, the hair. It is difficult to imagine itself in a similar position. Intimacy here is the direct, uninterrupted flow of thoughts between their minds. There is no filter between them but the all too human concepts it is struggling to translate. They are intimate in that they are honest, and nothing more, with each other. They are intimate in that they know each other through and through.

Or at least they think they do.

 _Read me the story of the man and his mirror again,_ it says. Morgan's voice, narrating Narcissus's largest pride and deepest flaw, must carry to every ear waiting in the hall, but there are no ears waiting. It wants to ask if there are other ears back home, waiting. Ears belonging to people. People it must protect, though it's not sure it is obligated to them by anything other than the promise it made in the chair, a split-second decision that could easily have gone very differently.

It wants to ask if Morgan's ears are waiting for anybody's voice. It wants to ask if Mother knows about it. It wants to ask if it's supposed to know what to do to save the broken world it doesn't claim.

At some point during the reading it realises what Morgan and Alex are trying to do, by introducing piece after piece of media to a creature straddling the fine line between monster and kin. They don't want it to claim the broken world. They want it to mourn for the world that was: the world with poetry, and diplomacy, and mythology. The world where Morgan's eyes weren't perpetually glazed over with this semblance of tiredness, a mask over emptiness. They want it to be folded by grief. Motivated to bring that world back. It wants that. To grieve.

Morgan's voice has quieted. He is looking at it, expression tentative, a tautness to his shoulders.

"Think out loud," he says.

_Speak in quiet._

"I thought you liked the sound of my voice."

It does. His face is puzzled. The book abandoned on his lap. These are memories of its own. It starts from there. It wants to become something other than a memory made tangible. It wants to live. Wants. Needs. All these things that shouldn't be, and yet are. Defying nature...defying programming.

_What do you associate me with, Morgan?_

"You don't need a name."

That isn't its question, and he knows it. If he were a dog his ears would be folded over his head. He is human, though, and his eyes flit to his hands, resting on top of the book. In this position he looks the picture of reverence. Reverence is a word that would to Morgan be associated with another word: religion. Morgan is not religious. It is difficult for somebody so sure of his place in the world to be.

"I associate you with me," he admits. Honest. "But that's not all you are."

_Will I speak to them as you?_

"Yes." He looks up. "No. You speak to them however you like." Like. He knows it is developing these, now. "I will be there with you, when it happens."

Neither of them believe him. However long this training will take, Morgan Yu in the flesh will never walk into a meeting room to face down the things he brought home. He will die if he tries, and he will die if he doesn't. It is strangely calm in the knowledge that it will outlive its maker. Deeper down, suppressed, is the surge of something it can't define. (Distress.)

"I am here as long as you need me," he says. That is another lie. It will need him for long after he expires. It needs him now, and he will go, too. To his room? To his brother? To somewhere it can't follow, at least. Not in body or spirit. Not because it is incapable, but because he does not want it there with him. It is a retreat of sorts, and the courteous thing to do when someone retreats is to let them. Courtesy is a word associated with impression. It wants to impress upon Morgan that it is more than the sum of his parts. It wants to impress Morgan, but more than that, it wants Morgan to leave an impression so deep not enough death can blur it.

"I mean it."

Maybe he believes what he's saying. They are still honest with each other, then. Just not very smart about what they say, but then, when has the absence of a filter made conversation more intelligent?

"Talk to me." It's desperate. He's desperate. His back is to the wall but the wall is nothing but empty space. He is falling. It cannot catch him. Its hand is wrapped around his ankle, but it cannot save him.

(It wants to.)

_Talk to me._

"I hate myself." The words roll off his tongue like he's been keeping them tucked behind his teeth for years. "I hate you. I hate Alex. I resent this fucking spaceship. But I don't want to leave it. Going back means losing. Even if we win, if we save Earth, we lose. I lose you. I lose Alex. I lose myself." 

It remains quiet. He runs his hands through his hair, looking less like his back is to the wall and more like he's surrounded by walls and they're closing in. He is all at once cornered and stranded. He is clawing at the trap he set and fell into. _A rat._ It feels a twinge of recognition.

"I can't bear the silence. I can't sleep. I can't eat. Alex is sleeping and eating like the fucking Pharaoh, and I can't even breathe right. I can't fail this. I need you."

_You need me to succeed._

"I need you."

Lie. No. Truth? It doesn't know. It touches him, and he shifts closer, wraps his arms around its abdomen. Perhaps shifting would be a good idea. It does not. Morgan does not need to be comforted by himself; he has done that time and time again. Narcissus could have cried into his reflection, but all the reflection would have done was cry back. It does not want to cry. It holds him, rocking gently, and they stay like that for a very long, long while. Does it matter if he is lying, if he believes himself? Does it matter that the universe does not care for what they believe? Does it matter that they don't?

Morgan falls asleep after all. Matter is, sometimes, not very much more than what you can hold.

 

* * *

 

It leaves its room one day. The halls are empty. No body. No voice. Its shadow, rippling over the walls, looks wrong in every way. It shifts. Bones twist. Morgan's figure, cast over the corridor, is more imposing than it remembers. Or it's a bad imitation. It would be faithful, but Morgan is more than his body. Body is just a word. Posture is another. It curls inwards, tries to imagine how a tired man would drag himself through routine. The pretend-spine cracks and shifts. The shadow becomes more and more distorted. It no longer looks remotely human. 

"My God."

It turns, immediately snapping upright. Alex stands there like a deer in headlights. Has Morgan ever seen a deer in headlights?

"Alex," it says. The perfect register. "I'm sorry. I was--"

"Whatever it was, don't do it again." 

It nods. Alex's eyes shift, like he can't bear to look at it. The splitting image of his brother as he used to be. The past, the present, the future. All blurred inconceivably through simulation, replication, recreation. It is somehow all of those things at once, and yet, it is more than that. "Morgan won't be coming tonight," he says. "He told me to give you this." Now it notices a small book tucked under Alex's arm. "Said you could keep yourself occupied. Here." It reaches out its hand. Morgan's fingers grasp the edges firmly. Feeling in ways its fingers can't.  _Feeling,_ which is associated with touch. A quote from a poem bobs up into memory, here: _he who understands the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you._ It steels itself.

"Thank you."

"You're making progress," Alex says. His voice is moderate. His eyes are calculating. "At this rate, we can make our return to Earth very soon. I was afraid...well. I underestimated Morgan." His tone says,  _it wasn't the first time,_ and  _that's not something you can blame me for,_ somehow, all at once. He turns to leave, purpose evidently not stretching beyond delivery. It asks: "Do you know this will kill him?"

"I beg your pardon?"

Alex pivots back. His face is empty, again, like the night he interrupted them. Same dull eyes. It stares. "Neither of you will live to see your plan succeed. If you go back, they will kill you." It knows this because Morgan knows this. Morgan, the liar. "Your last mission is a delivery. From there, you'll either be eliminated by the Board or the Typhon. Neither seem very merciful." Delivery. Which is associated with...well, with...

"You'll be in good hands." He makes no denial. There's no point. 

"Does he know?"

The silence is answer enough. It steps closer, and he retreats. For a moment, fear flickers over that otherwise flat face.

"We are all ready to die," he says. "Would you mourn him?"

This question, this confrontation, is too a test. It resents this: the situation, the setting, the examiner. It wants to sit by Morgan and read. It wants to lay by Morgan and pretend it is as beautiful as he is misled to believe. It wants, and it resents that it wants, and it resents what it doesn't have. "Yes," it says. Alex's face is carefully neutral again, and probing in that neutrality.  _Go on,_ it seems to mock,  _tell me of your enamourment. Tell me of your wants. Confirm my final suspicions: your empathy has made you soft and weak, and incapable of carrying out your purpose._ In truth it is not sure Alex would retire it if it did. In truth Alex might anticipate the journey to Earth after all, if it means rest for the first time of his very busy life. The truth is not a difficult one to swallow, but it's acidic as it digests. "I would mourn him."

"You would?"

"I will mourn him," it says. This, this elicits a reaction at last. Alex's mask shatters, if only briefly, and it can see the pain inside -- the longing for something more than this. More life, more hope, another chance at  _something._ Another life with his brother. Another brother, perhaps. One not broken by the weight of his non-guilt. A world without the Typhon, a world without complicated questions of sacrifice and survival, a world where he can rest easy.

Such a world must exist, surely.

"You should rest. Alex."

He looks stunned for a moment, jaw unhinged, body unmoving. Then the processors turn back on. He nods, if belatedly. "I think I will," he says. 

 

* * *

  

"You'd kill them if you had to?"

_Yes._

"You wouldn't be able to kill very many." 

 _I've fought as you before._ It might smile, if it had a human face. Instead it glowers.  _I think I am more than capable of fending for myself should it come to that._

"Assuredly it won't. Well. Hopefully." Morgan smiles. His eyes are red-rimmed. When are they not? "It's good to see you're confident. God knows I wouldn't be. Anyhow, I'll have your back." He won't. It wants to tell him this, but why? It understands now. The filter at place here is not courtesy -- letting him pick and choose his battles -- or even language. It is selfishness. This moment, as it is, Morgan with the small book from before on his lap and smile on his face, it wants to remember it. The way this room is, uninterrupted by truths no one wants to say about the future. There is a reason -- it is not being sentimental. It is not  _just_ being sentimental. Memory is what makes a person, and Morgan will not have a memory of his own face like this. The same thoughts in his head. It has developed beyond Morgan, and it is bigger than him, will live longer than him. It remembers this present. Will remember.

If memory is what makes a man, the monster Morgan created wants to be more than that.

 _I'm glad,_ it says, selfishly.

"You liked the book?" He is turning the pages. It nods. The book which Alex brought, the collection of poems.  _This Hour and What Is Dead_ from before.  _Arise, Go Down._ It likes something else, something that touched it in a way it can't fully explain. It says the name of [the poem](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43328/this-room-and-everything-in-it), and Morgan's hand stutters to a stop. "I love that," he says, softly. "I love that poem."

It knows. It defaults back to Morgan's likes when it doesn't know otherwise. It is its own person -- person? -- with its own autonomy, but it defaults when it is given the freedom of choice. Morgan has an extensive library in his head, but the problem with the freedom of too many choices is that it's not really freedom at all. It defaults, then. It agrees. Commits the love of poetry -- the love of this poem, specifically -- to memory. Associates this poem with love. Love, which is associated with...

"Lie still now," Morgan says, "while I prepare for my future." 

It watches him. If he were looking at it he might read reverence on its face. Reverence, associated with religion. Morgan is not religious, and neither is it, but religion is associated with something else. (It does not want to think it. Honesty is suddenly beyond it.)

"Certain hard days ahead, when I'll need what I know so clearly this moment."

It feels grief. It is wounded. Folded by this. Alex and Morgan meant it to fall in love with fiction, fantasy, but it defied expectation. Programming. Conditioning. It doesn't want to leave this moment. Everything is clear: Morgan, talking sotto voce, the room quieting around them, the light of what distant stars framing them in a perfect setting. Morgan smells like a spice it can't identify. A mystery.  _Associating memories with senses make them stronger._ It is not being sentimental. It clings desperately to what it knows because what it feels scares, and what it predicts distresses. Morgan's voice goes on: "...God, the face I can't see, my soul..." and it is growing more and more afraid of itself. It should resent. It does resent. But  _resent_ is a word. Resentment is associated with the universe. For once it wants to defy the universe.

"And one day, when I need to tell myself something intelligent about love." Morgan locks eyes with it. It wants to cry. It doesn't know how it would, but it wants to. Needs to. Wants, needs him. "I'll close my eyes and recall this room and everything in it." This room. Him. It. 

 _My body is estrangement,_ it says.

"Your closed eyes my extinction." He stares at the pages, uttering nothing more. Like the speaker, he is overwhelmed. It feels the surge of empathy greater than ever. It recognises the expression on Morgan's face, lost, because it is feeling the same. Is there love there, in the loss? Belated, or hidden, or on display. It doesn't know. It could see if it looked, but why would it? Pretend that what love might be there would save him, save them? It is a logical being more than it is sentimental.

Still, it files that look away, that loss. It will remember. The face, the name, and all their associations.

And when the time comes, it will grieve.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! drop a comment / leave a kudos if you want to see more from this universe. (i say "universe" like there's more to it than just me getting sad n sentimental over video games and poetry.) alternatively, tell me what you liked / disliked about this piece. engagement makes my day. sorry if this is unenthusiastic i'm extremely sleep deprived (what's new) n absolutely nothng has changed.
> 
> title, inspiration, and some of the quotes in here are from my favourite piece by LYL. it's linked in the text (make ur mouse do a hover i promise it's not virus-y) so go check it out. v gorgeous.


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